The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for identifying potential security risks. In particular, but not exclusively, the invention relates to the detection of a condition which indicates a security risk in user equipment of a communication system.
Various user equipment (UE), such as computers (fixed or portable), mobile telephones, personal data assistants (PDA's) or organizers and so on are known to the skilled person and these can be used to communicate with other user equipment in a communication system or to access the Internet to obtain services. Mobile user equipment is often referred to as a mobile station (MS) and can be defined as a means which is capable of communication via a wireless interface with another device such as a base station of a mobile telecommunication network or any other station. Such mobile user equipment can be adapted for voice, text message or data communication via the wireless interface.
As digital convergence reshapes the way businesses and users use and share information a merging of digital communication technology, digital media and computing is taking place. UE is being developed to enable users to access the facilities provided by such convergence.
So-called high-end mobile phones (or smartphones or communicators) are examples of MS which have been developed to fulfil this requirement. These include not only a cellular mobile telephony (CMT) interface which enables the MS to operate as a mobile phone but also include a personal data assistant (PDA) interface which enables a user to use the MS as a PDA.
A feature of some of these smartphones is that they provide the facility of installing or loading third party software into the MS. As is known such software can include malicious software in the guise of viruses, trojan horses or some other element introduced by a hacker in order to abuse the MS or to gain access to some facilities.
It is well known that Personal Computers (PC's) are susceptible to such problems and the solutions proposed in that field are manyfold and include detailed security measures to prevent, detect and/or respond to the security risks posed by such malicious software.
However the open operating systems of most of the handportable devices, such as the Symbian operating system (OS), which exist currently for MS do not provide a fine grained security model for overcoming the security risk. Furthermore various solutions which have been proposed are application level solutions which are software based. These can be bypassed by a sophisticated programmer.
The various security features in a MS can be categorized as:                1. prevention        2. detection        3. response        
Improving any one of these for the OS systems in a MS will help improve the security by reducing the security risk.